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Topic: Invisible corners and OWOOT (Read 664 times)

An intriguing question about the interaction of OWOOT rules and invisible corners has been raised at the ZakStunts shoutbox. Given that there is no real precedent (tracks with mixed rules were, up to now, uncommon, and OWOOT-only illusion tracks even more so), I feel a straw poll and discussion thread might be useful. Some facts about invisible corners:

You get an illusion corner by placing the main tile of a corner on an inner angled slope. While you can do so with small corners of any orientation, for large corners only south-to-east and north-to-west turns work -- with other orientations you get either a quasi-normal corner or further bizarre terrain glitches.

The invisibility happens because the game gets confused with the illegal element-terrain superimposition and draws the track at zero height, rather than atop the hill. That makes the corner invisible from inside the car. The pavement can be seen from above, albeit at the wrong height.

The corner behaves normally as far as physics go; that is, the part that counts as paved is the same one you'd get from a regular corner atop the hill, with the usual grass slowdown outside it.

My two cents: I think the rules shouldn't be applied in the invisible corner tiles. Having to follow something which you can't see is not very fun, specially in NoRH. Furthermore, even verification with the F3 camera can't be done properly in-game due to the height differences. I feel that any line should be allowed as long as you are OWOOT both when exiting the tile before the invisible corners and when returning to the track at the entrance of the tile after them -- which already restricts lines quite a bit in relation to what you'd get with shortcuts.